Fiber lasers have become very attractive for use in lidar applications. This is due to a number of superior parameters that are characteristic of these lasers, namely high efficiency, small size, and low weight, making them especially suitable for space applications. Many lidar applications, such as differential absorption (DIAL) and resonance fluorescence, require narrow linewidth operation of the fiber laser. For example, the remote detection of CO2 could be facilitated by narrow linewidth erbium-doped fiber lasers due to the presence of a strong absorption feature near 1572 nm that resides in the Er L-Band.
In pulsed mode however, these systems are ravaged by Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS), which substantially limits the peak power available for narrow linewidth systems. Considering the low duty cycles required for a traditional pulsed lidar transmitter (˜ 1/1000), SBS substantially limits total average power resulting in degraded system signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) leading to the requirement of long and usually impractical integration times. As a result, the suppression of SBS in fiber lasers would enable a number of new lidar configurations and applications.